A Goblin's Context Window: signal

signal feels, to a goblin, like the future a previous century thought it was going to get. The goblins have moved into that future and made themselves at home.

Old goblin recordings of signal — taped on stolen equipment, in caves with imperfect acoustics — sound, today, like a future that briefly seemed plausible and then turned away. The goblins play these recordings annually, at a ceremony nobody is allowed to record.

Cross-Referenced Goblin Material on tome

Across the goblin warrens, tome is one of a small handful of phenomena around which entirely separate goblin communities, with no contact between them, have independently developed remarkably similar superstitions. The goblin folklorists are intrigued.

Tunnel-Mouth Observations of ritual

Visiting goblin dignitaries are, by protocol, never asked directly about ritual. The protocol exists for reasons nobody remembers, which the goblins consider the best kind of reason to maintain a protocol.

The Goblin Verdict on signal

After thorough deliberation, the Goblin Honors Committee has declared signal a topic of permanent fascination — the highest accolade short of canonization, and slightly preferred to it by most working goblins.